There is lots of good information in the Historical Tables of the Budget, which is produced by the Office of Management and Budget. I was particularly fascinated by the data on inflation-adjusted total domestic spending (discretionary and entitlements), which can be obtained by adding columns E and H of Table 8.2.

As you can see in this chart, Reagan managed to limit average domestic spending increases to less than one percent per year. These figures, which are adjusted for inflation, show that spending has grown more than five times as rapidly during the Bush-Obama years.

The comparison is even more dramatic if we examine the average annual increase in inflation-adjusted domestic spending. In other words, we’re looking at how much spending increased each year, not the percentage change. During the Reagan years, overall domestic spending grew less than $10 billion per year, while spending has soared more than $100 billion per year during the Bush-Obama era. Remember that we’re using inflation-adjusted dollars, so this is an apples-to-apples comparison.

The final chart maps annual domestic spending (in constant 2005 dollars) for Reagan’s eight fiscal years on the right vertical axis and the 10 fiscal years of Bush-Obama on the left vertical axis. Two things stand out. First, the bailout dramatically affected outlays in recent years, both because of a huge jump in fiscal year 2009 and an artificial dampening in the past two years (because repayments from banks and other bailed-out institutions count as “negative spending” rather than revenues).

Second, you can’t blame the poor record of Bush and Obama on bailouts. The chart axes are designed to give a similar starting point for Reagan’s spending and Bush-Obama spending, and it is obvious that Bush’s approach of so-called compassionate conservatism meant a bigger and more wasteful budget for domestic spending. Obama promised hope and change, of course, but he grabbed the big-spending baton from Bush and continued in the same direction, though TARP payments and repayments make it more challenging to discern the precise impact of the “stimulus” and other Obama initiatives (Tables 8.6 and 8.8 of the Historical Tables have program-by-program data for those who want the gory details).

I sometimes assert that the greatest enemies of freedom in Washington are mortgage payments and tuition bills. When people give me a blank stare, I say that I’m joking, but I use the opportunity to explain that the desire for easy wealth (and the lifestyle it enables) lures many Republicans to become lobbyists and to promote policies that they almost surely understand are bad for America.

These GOPers, who do the wrong thing to line their own pockets, are the worst people in Washington. They presumably first got involved in policy because they recognized government is a cesspool, but eventually got corrupted and decide it is a hot tub. To put it mildly, this gets me very agitated. For instance:

So you won’t be surprised to know that I am on the verge of going postal after reading a report from The Hill about all the Republican lobbyists who are getting lucrative contracts to fight against the Tea Party agenda and lobby on behalf of big government. Here are the utterly nauseating details.

A stable of former GOP aides has been hired by public television stations, children’s hospitals and other interest groups that fear they’ll be targeted for spending cuts by the Republican House. Most of the aides left Congress years ago, but many still have close ties to senior Republicans on Capitol Hill, including Speaker John Boehner (Ohio). They’ve been hired to try to convince the new GOP Congress that some public spending is worth continuing and not reducing. An advocacy group for the Association of Public Television Stations, for example, has hired GOP lobbyists John Feehery and Marc Lampkin of Quinn Gillespie & Associates to fight off budget cuts. …A review of lobbying disclosure records by The Hill shows the public television stations are hardly alone in recruiting GOP muscle. A number of associations hoping to retain federal funding have recently added GOP lobbyists with connections to the new majority. The hiring binge indicates Republican lobbyists are earning dividends from their party’s re-taking of the House in November and points to the headaches in store for a Republican House that wants to take a hatchet to public spending. Targets of GOP budget cuts say they need all the help they can get from the coming GOP-led onslaught. “Everyone is going to make their case for government support for their projects,” said one GOP lobbyist. …The California High-Speed Rail Authority has hired Ogilvy Government Relations’ Drew Maloney, a former aide to DeLay, to work on retaining federal grants for high-speed rail. …Williams & Jensen has registered to lobby for AARP to work on senior-citizen issues and President Obama’s deficit commission report. Prominent Republican lobbyist Steve Hart is among those working for the group, which wants to make sure the new healthcare law is not repealed. …The National Association of Children’s Hospitals (NACH) has hired former Rep. Deborah Pryce (R-Ohio) of Clark Lytle & Geduldig to lobby for the reauthorization of the Children’s Hospitals Graduate Medical Education program, which uses $317.5 million in federal funding a year.

Some of my Republican friends sometimes respond by asserting that Democrats are worse, but I grade on a curve. Democrats seek to make government bigger because they believe in statism. So it’s not terribly surprising or philosophically inconsistent for them to become lobbyists and get rich pushing to expand the burden of government (though some Democrats lobby for things that are not completely consistent with a left-wig agenda, such as special tax breaks or defense contracts, so it’s not a black-and-white divide).

Republicans, however, tell voters that they believe in small government and individual liberty. So when GOP politicians and staffers decide to get rich by lobbying for bigger government, that is more disgusting.

Doing the wrong thing is bad. But doing the wrong they when you know it is wrong is even worse.